Sámi woman’s headdress

Sámi Museum Siida presents six different kinds of women's headdresses from its collection during 2018. Earlier, Sámi women covered their heads when moving outside home. If they didn’t want to wear a hat, they wore at least a scarf. Covering the head was especially important at church and on the way to and from the church. Sámi women wore their traditional headgear even after they had otherwise started to wear Western clothes. Even now, many older Sámi women wear the traditional headgear every day.

In the Finnish Sámi region there are five areas of clothing tradition with their own headgear designs. Within each area, the models vary by the family and the place. The design of the traditional clothing a Sámi wears is, however, determined by her/his own and family’s tradition, not the place in which (s)he lives. For the Finnish Sámi, the most common headgear is a bonnet-type red broadcloth hat, which has been decorated with a lacy edging strip and silk and other bands, according to the customs of the area and the family.

Of the Finnish Sámi, the Skolt Sámi have a headgear tradition of their own: among them, a maiden, wife and widow each have their own type of hat. Skolt Sámi headgear is sewn from red broadcloth and decorated with beadwork.

Apart from broadcloth hats, a variety of fur hats are worn in winter. The delicate skin of a newborn reindeer calf is the finest material used for such fur headgear. In addition to such skin, fur from foxes, seals, rabbits and young goats as well as fur from reindeer’s legs are used for fur hats. The fur hats differ in terms of their shape between the different areas; for example, in the west of the Sámi region, the headgear is more rounded. The fur hats are tasselled with broadcloth, and the tassels are often decorated with bands in the region of Enontekiö. Among the Inari Sámi, the pom-poms of the headgear are often red and green.